After a complex selection process a winner has come out on top of the Brazil finals over the weekend. With 14 regional events the competition is always fierce but Geraldo Cecílio and Renan Aguiar had the superior cosplay performance with their One Piece rendition.

(photo from JBC homepage)
Here is a video of them after their win, they are elated and seem to be an energetic couple of guys. I like the 52 second mark in particular.

The pair came from the regional round at Mercado Mundo Mix in Sao Paulo. Having a look at the web page it is in a well situated area of Sao Paolo on the Avenida Paulista and it looks like they will be having an event in Portugal coming up as well. Here is a shot of the 2 after winning the regional round.

(photo from JBC homepage)
Again, you can see all of the teams that made the finals on the JBC Brazil homepage here. Even if you can't read Portuguese, click around and check out to great cosplay!

The cosplay proceedings are taking place at this moment in Paris at Japan Expo. It is their 10th year anniversary and is currently the largest anime/manga related convention in Europe. Damien and Isabelle from France took home the WCS2007 championship so the battle will be fierce. We are looking forward to seeing who comes out on top!

You can find further information here on the Japan Expo home page.

Lots of new changes are in store for WCS 2009. One new event for this year is an anime song contest the morning of the championship, August 2nd. It will be held in collaboration with Joy Sound and applications will be accepted starting July 10th. The news is up on the Japanese side of the web page, hopefully it will be done online with an English version as well so people coming from abroad who want to apply can do so.

You may have noticed in the news file, the representatives for France 2009 have been selected, they are Cecilia Albanese and Eva Turpin. Congratulations and see you in a few weeks!

In fact the 14th representative selection for WCS 2009 is happening at Cosfest VIII right now!

That leaves the Japan preliminaries to round out the 15 groups. This year the Japan preliminaries will occur before and will actually overlap the first half of the Championship on August 2nd. I will get you information on the winners from Singapore when it comes in.

After an online selection process the 5 finalist teams for Japan have been selected.

Above is Yurie, they are from Osaka and have been invited to several cosplay events outside of Japan.

This is Hasse, they have been cosplaying for 10 years and are regular competitors in the WCS preliminaries and finals in Japan.

The 3rd selection is Toi Type, they have some great photo cosplay and strive the best interpretation of their characters as possible in performance.

This is Barbara, they are familiar faces at WCS preliminaries as well, in fact they came in second place in the 2006 WCS Championship so you know they will have an impressive performance prepared.

The last pair is Campanella. They are in fact twins who cosplay actively in the USA and will be back in Japan for the WCS event.

This is a brief introduction of the teams, you can see better pictures of them here!

The Japan preliminaries will take place at the same time as the Championship itself with the winner determined midway through the Championship and performing as the last team to compete on the main stage.

The Audience judge system has been carried over from last year, its a great way to have the general audience participating in the judging and promotes interaction between the cosplayers on stage and the lucky 10 who are selected randomly from the entrants. The deadline for application has come and gone. We will see who ends up taking part in deciding the championship winners!

There was a press conference at TVA today and Yuimino came by for a little presentation.

Below they are looking great dressed up as characters from Code Geass and eating cake.

They have a live performance in Nagoya on July 26th, Ill try to stop by there and get some more pictures!

The focus has turned to the WCS event itself as the first days of activities (for staff anyway) begins tomorrow. We can't, can't, can't forget however that we have a 14th selected team from Singapore.

Here is a shot of them from their Macross Frontier performance on Youtube (search for: Cosfest 2009: Representative WCS Macross Frontier Singapore) Good show, GREAT singing. I don't have the official placard picture of their win at Cosfest 2009 yet but I just couldn't wait. Jia yo Singapore!

Here is Iris and Arttu of Finland as they arrive at Narita airport Tuesday morning.

Australia arrived at Narita airport in the afternoon around 5, here is Katharine and Gabriella with one of the event organizers and a cosplayer himself, Kenny.

That evening all the teams that came in on Tuesday went out for dinner at an izakaya. You can see in the picture from the right Australia, Brazil, Finland and China. (the guy at the bottom giving the peace sign is from Australia too actually) Everyone was in for a special surprise as the creator of Pokemon was at the same izakaya too (coincidence?) and came over to say hello, bearing Pokemon goods. After dinner Finland and China went to visit team USA in their hotel and everyone drank juice.

No actually it was the Ministry of Foreign Affairs but that was the running joke. Another joke was the Spock doll that the Australian ladies brought with them but he was not permitted entrance because of his pointy ears. Here is everyone dressed up in their cosplay outside. From the right you can see the guys from China dressed up in Sangoku Musso, Finland is doing Trinity Blood, Australia is wearing costumes from Bubble Gum Crisis and Brazil is doing Full Metal Alchemist.
On the far left you can see the 2 girls from SKE48, a group of performers put together by the same person who created AKB48. They will be performing during the intermission of the Championship on Sunday.

Todays schedule has the groups that did not finished their staging meeting meet with the stage manager and communicated the lighting and props they would like to use. Here are a few of us at lunch eating curry rice. On the left is Singapore, then a couple of the guys from Australia, WCS staff and the Finland pair at the end.

At 7 today we had the general meeting where all international teams got a chance to meet each other and decide the team order by lottery.

Below is the spanish pair determining a line at the top and drawing a line no the white board.

After the meeting we all went to karaoke, with 60 or 70 people it was pretty busy and everyone got a chance to meet and talk to other participants while taking in the anime songs.

There was one very big surprise for everyone, halfway through the event Ichiro Mizuki strolled in and started belting out songs. People were floored. The rest of the evening was spent getting his autograph or taking pictures with him. What a blast!

On Friday July 31st, all 14 teams split into 2 groups to take part in a number of activities. Due to the number of places to go and the size of some of the locations the first group who went to City Hall in the morning numbered 12: Australia, Finland, USA, China, Korea and Mexico.

When the first group of 6 countries had finished their visits in the morning, the other 8 teams (France, Spain, Italy, Brazil, Thailand, Germany, Singapore, Denmark) went to do a stage presentation at Centrair Airport. Here you can see them in line being interviewed on stage.

The cosplayers are staying in a new hotel this year and the city center is dominated with signs advertising the WCS. Here is one sign that is right outside the Sakae subway station.